A WONDERFUL NOWRUZ TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHEREVER YOU ARE, WHETHER YOU ARE IRANIAN OR NOT.. SPRING IS BEING PROMISED BY UNCLE PIRUZ
All lovers of Iranian cinema would be familiar with Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiriastomi. Their collaboration The White Balloon was the first Iranian movie that I remember seeing, It kindled in me a long lost attachment to Iran kindled when I was just six years old when my father brought me an edition of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat
I am so far removed from Iran in this land of heathens who show no interest in the cultural history of ancient people, these people themselves being very new in their pretensions.
In 2024, Nowruz, the Persian New Year, will begin at the exact moment of the vernal equinox on Tuesday, March 19 at 11:06 PM Eastern Time (New York, Miami, Havana) Nowruz is the first day of spring and marks the end of winter and the beginning of renewal for nature. The word Nowruz means "new day" in Persian
On this day, coming back from taking care of the indigenous people who live in the national park near here, I would put on new clothes, a shirt which I had kept aside with a poem of Hafez imprinted on it, a gift much appreciated of a student who arrived to do a PhD in Ohio. I sent a poem by Sa’adi without mentioning the author to some of my Iranian friends and all of them knew who wrote it, such is the high level of intellectual curiosity in that most educated country surrounded by darkness of the centuries past (except equally enlightened Israel)
I would like pay homage to my friends who have disappeared behind the veils of oblivion and especially my friend from Karaj for whom I eagerly waited many years ago at an International Airport
So my dear friends, lovers, sisters, wives, daughters, mothers ..I wish all of you a wonderful Nowruz holiday and tomorrow night please send me a message of no words and silence but just thoughts and it would arrive at the doorstep of my heart. Thank you .
